GingreyA conservative member of Congress wants to amend the District’s gun laws so that it would be legal for active-duty members of the U.S. armed forces to roam the streets while carrying their sidearms. However, the bill submitted yesterday by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) is just a non-binding “sense of the House” resolution.
Still, it raised the ire of Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who is calling it an attack on the District’s home rule and a reminder that House Republicans still have their sights set on upending D.C.’s firearms laws, which are some of the toughest in the United States. “Its introduction this early in the new Congress is an indication that Republicans plan to continue to attack D.C.’s gun safety laws at every opportunity,” Norton said in a news release.
Gingrey’s resolution is nothing new, though. During the 112th Congress, he attached it to a defense appropriations act; it was eventually excised from the final bill. The congressman, recently sworn into his sixth term, is an outspoken supporter of gun ownership, and was one of many House Republicans to file an amicus brief in Heller v. District of Columbia, the 2009 Supreme Court case that struck down the city’s ban on handgun ownership.
Since the Heller ruling, Gingrey has kept up his appeal to further slacken D.C.’s gun laws, though not those of any state. (Among other interests, he also backed Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin’s notorious comments about “legitimate rape” last year.)
If passed, the resolution introduced yesterday would have no actual impact on the District’s laws, though it would send an overt message. However, there is still an opening for binding legislation that could impact D.C.’s firearms laws. Senate Democrats yesterday announced that the amendment process on a forthcoming gun control package in response to last month’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn. will be open to all proposals.
